La Caisse des Dépôts et la chaire ESoPS de l’Université Panthéon Sorbonne organisent le colloque annuel Retraite et Vieillissement les 09 et 10/10/2025.
A cette occasion, Anais Cheneau, Jonathan Sicsic et Thomas Rapp développeront la méthode d’analyse mixte utilisée pour exploiter les résultats du premier volet France de l’enquête Aging UP! sur l’Organisation des soins.
“Care at home vs. in a nursing home: A Mixed-methods approach to understanding elderly preferences.”
As populations age, long-term care policies must balance individual preferences with financial constraints.
In France, the prevailing “aging in place” policy assumes that citizens overwhelmingly prefer home care over nursing homes. However, little is known about people’s preferences towards long-term care options before disability occurs. We elicit preferences among community-dwelling adults aged over 60 using a mixed-method approach: qualitative interviews and a two-stage D-efficient discrete choice experiment. In each task, respondents first choose between two hypothetical nursing homes varying in professional care quality, living environment, out-of-pocket (OOP) cost, and proximity, then decided whether they would prefer receiving care in this nursing home or remaining at home.
A representative sample of 2,886 French adults over 60 completed the survey in 2024. We used random-effect conditional logit and latent class logit models to investigate trade-offs and preference heterogeneity.
While a majority (54%) consistently favored home-care, 37% shifted their decision in response to improved nursing home characteristics. Professional care quality and living environment influenced choices as strongly as OOP cost, while proximity plays a secondary role. Strengthening staffing and training, upgrading equipment and the conviviality of shared spaces, and containing OOP costs are direct levers to raise the acceptability of nursing home care.